Marking the centenary of the start of World War I (or the ‘Great War’ as it came to be known), this conference will consider the content, form and cultural significance of protest against war and military intervention in the years leading up to 1918. Jacques Rancière argues in The Politics of Aesthetics that “the arts only ever lend to projects of domination or emancipation what they are able to lend to them, that is to say, quite simply, what they have in common with them: bodily positions and movements, functions of speech, the parcelling out of the visible and the invisible”. This conference will explore the relationship between the arts and social protest movements, asking how literature, song, theatre and the visual arts have been put to use to shape a politics and poetics of dissent against war and domination, as well as how far political and communal cultures have shaped the forms of conscientious objection, anti-war, anti-intervention and peace protest.

Papers are welcome from across the Humanities, considering anti-war or pro-peace protest in Britain, Europe and beyond. We also welcome considerations of the ways in which the protests of the past, and their effects, have shaped contemporary representations of war and peace. Topics might include: